Newly-appointed Information Minister Zainuddin Maidin said today the national language should be known as Bahasa Malaysia and not Bahasa Melayu.

He said Bahasa Malaysia better reflects the 'mother tongue' of Malaysian citizens and not just of one ethnic group.

"Bahasa Malaysia is for all, not just for Malays. Whoever resides in Malaysia, his mother tongue is Bahasa Malaysia.

"But there are certain parties that are seeking political gain by calling it Bahasa Melayu and using Malay sentiments. But the national language is Bahasa Malaysia. That was the wish of the Tunku (Abdul Rahman) and the late Hussein Onn," he said.

Zainuddin was speaking at a press conference at Angkasapuri, Kuala Lumpur to announce the establishment of a permanent committee to oversee the standardisation of language among broadcast media.

Chaired by himself, the committee, which comprises representatives from all broadcast media organisations, will monitor the proper usage of Bahasa Malaysia in television and radio programmes.

While there will be no compulsion to follow its new guidelines, Zainuddin said the committee will 'strongly advise' broadcast media operators who use colloquial Malay, Malay dialects and wrong pronunciation to abandon their practice.

Political party ownership

To a question on his recent statement that the business personalities should steer clear of running media organisations, the minister said he stood by his observation.

Last Friday, Zainuddin had said that business tycoons who ran media companies would erode the organisation's journalistic principles of objectivity, impartiality, truthfulness and balanced reporting.

Asked about if his comment applied to ownership of news organisations by political parties, he said that there are no editors currently who were political party leaders though he agreed there were certain media organisations whose investors by proxy were political parties.

" The Star did not start as an investment by a political party nor was it established by political masters [...] Political parties who were rich later invested in it. Even Utusan Melayu was started by the Malays fighting against the English. At one time, it was even controlled by communists," he said.

A former group-editor of Utusan Melayu Group, Zainuddin said his claims of the newspaper being formerly linked to communists could be checked with his former mentor and former Utusan Melayu editor-in-chief, Syed Zahari.